The Folks at Fifty-Eight (37 page)

“Why?”

“I just saw someone who could use it. Wait here.”

Gabriel snatched the bill away, then climbed out of the car and crossed the street. He made for the back of the crowd where a man stood watching the comings and goings.

The man was a young Hispanic, dressed in dirty and threadbare clothing. He turned and started moving away when he saw Gabriel. The detective grabbed him by the arm, blocked any further retreat and held out the fifty-dollar bill.

With ownership of the bill transferred, a conversation ensued before the young Hispanic walked away and disappeared into the crowd. Gabriel wandered back to the car, slid into the passenger seat and grinned at Hammond’s wry observation.

“I take it that’s the last I’ll see of my fifty bucks?”

“It’s a fucking expensive town. Somebody should’ve warned you.”

“Do I get a receipt?”

“You want information about a homicide, or you want help with the fucking IRS?”

Hammond held up his hands in mock surrender.

“All right. So who was that? More importantly, does he know what happened?”

“You still don’t get this fucking city, do you, J. Edgar? Every Spic in the neighbourhood knows exactly what fucking happened. It’s just that my man Julio there’s the only fucker willing to talk about it to someone from outside the fucking neighbourhood.”

“What did he tell you?”

Much to Hammond’s rising annoyance, Gabriel began to muse.

“Strange how so many people make mistakes in this fucking game. They think ’cos it’s the middle of the fucking night, and the streets are quiet, nobody’s watching ‘em. But if there’s one lesson I’ve learnt over the last thirty years, in this fucking business and this fucking city, someone is always watching. No matter how late the hour, or how quiet the fucking streets, there’s always someone. When you’re a cop it ain’t worth the fucking trouble chasing ‘em down, cos the odds are you’re gonna get fuck-all from ’em. But when you’re a no-account fucking gumshoe, with a fifty-dollar fucking bill. . . That’s a different fucking matter.”

“So, what did you learn?”

“New Cadillac, or he reckoned it looked new; shiny black and classy-looking, anyway. It got here in the early hours, carrying four passengers. Stopped just over there. All four occupants got out, two men from the front, two women from the back. The women looked like hookers, expensive Spic hookers: short coats and long evening gowns, tight little asses and sticking-out tits, real classy-looking Manhattan fucking meat. Men were heavy whites, clean-shaven fucking hoodlums in monkey suits. Hookers walked off along the street and then cut south down Lexington in a major fucking hurry. Men watched ‘em go, then went to the trunk and took out your friend over there. Hauled him down the alley and dumped him behind the cans. They got back in the Caddy, headed along the street for a while, and then turned north.”

“That was fifty bucks worth? Is that all you got? Didn’t they even get the license plate?”

“Not the numbers. He said the old woman who saw it was too far away, but she did reckon they were Connecticut fucking plates.”

“So will either of them tell that to the police?”

“Not unless the fucking flatfoot asking the question’s a little over six fucking inches by two-and-a-half, coloured green, stamped with the number fifty, and a dead fucking ringer for Ulysses S. Grant. Now where did you say this fucker Zalesie lives?”

“Manhattan sometimes, but mostly he’s based in Connecticut.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you said.”

He sat looking straight ahead. Hammond finally broke the silence.

“Coincidence probably. There must be hundreds of Cadillacs in Connecticut.”

“Probably fucking thousands.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, just a fucking coincidence.”

“He may not even own one.”

“Rich fucker like that, probably only buys Rolls Royce and fucking Bentley.”

“And if he did have a fleet of Cadillacs, he wouldn’t be dumb enough to use one for this.”

“Not unless he reckoned himself fucking fireproof.”

“You mean, like some of those Folks at Fifty-Eight?”

“So what are we doing here, J. Edgar, looking for a girl, or solving a fucking homicide?”

“We’re looking for the girl, and that’s it. That was the deal. Anyway, like you said, a grain of sand’s got more chance.”

“Glad to hear you were paying fucking attention. So what do you want to do now? We’ve still got the rest of the day, or do you Washington fly-boys only work mornings?”

Hammond smiled briefly, but was then serious.

“I need to go to the office and deal with the fallout. I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

“Meantime, what do I do?”

“Find out what you can about Zalesie. Check his background. Find out why they kicked him out of Lithuania. See if you can discover where he got his money from, and how he got it out of Europe, but don’t press. We don’t want the wrong people getting upset. Just find out what you can. I’ll take the trip up to Connecticut when I get back, and touch base after that.”

“Sure. You know how to get up there?”

“I know it’s north.”

“Thought you went to Princeton and grew up in fucking Hartford?”

“I did, but I haven’t been anywhere near either in over fifteen years.”

“Lot of changes in that time. . . Highway One, through Pelham. Get a fucking map.”

“I did manage to find my way around before I met you.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t finding your way around in New York fucking City.”

He had fallen asleep while reading lurid newspaper stories of Carlisle’s debauched lifestyle. Someone had leaked the gruesome details, and the fact that Carlisle had held responsibility for understanding European cultures and traditions. One creative journalist had found a brothel madam, who claimed that Carlisle often paid for sado-masochistic sex.
The
New
York
Enquirer
came up with a clever play on European royalty and the Marquis de Sade, and the entire press corps had a field day.

Nobody took any notice of fact or truth. Nobody took all that much notice of the hunt for the killer. Their only interest was in sordid tales of Carlisle’s depravity, whether real or imagined, related by any New York or Washington cutie with a pose to hold and a story to sell.

It was 3 a.m. and Hammond was reliving his most recent nightmare: greeting the faces that so often visited him in the small hours, and hazily recalling their deaths. Once again he’d woken to discover they were no longer here to torment him. Once again he was alone in the darkness, with only his memories and his conscience.

This night, though, the dream had moved on, from guilt-laden reunions to that of his own death in a place of style and soundproof opulence, a place he remembered well.

The hazy backdrop of abstract wasteland, with only gravestones and ghouls to relieve the blandness, had faded. With it had gone all those nameless faces that so often moved in and out of his nightmares with terror-stricken cries on their lips and accusing glares in their eyes. This night the people who haunted his sleep had come from the present, but the nightmare had held more than its share of terror.

Hammond climbed out of bed and switched on the light, as he always did whenever faces from the past came calling in the night. He expected the sudden illumination to hurt his eyes and clear the remembrance, but the graphic horror of his imaginings had remained.

He remembered standing in an ornately-panelled room with a long polished table. Chambers and Allum were there, sitting alongside Carpenter, with the quietly devious Stanislav Paslov sitting on the opposite side. They had been talking in whispers, but stopped to study his arrival.

Someone was sitting where Chambers had sat during the meeting. Hammond couldn’t see who. Several other faces were there, too, some murmuring and some listening, but they all stopped and stared accusingly across at him as he entered the room.

It was then that he became aware of another figure, standing by his side.

He turned to see who it was, but other than a mouth that screamed at him, the face had held no features. He looked down, from where the face should have been to see the blood and gore, and immediately knew it was Alan Carlisle. He remembered the mouth, repeating the same words again and again, but he couldn’t remember those words.

He walked on into the room, leaving the featureless Carlisle at the door. It was then that he saw the figure at the head of the table: the long blonde hair and porcelain skin, the erotic form and seductive smile.

Bathed in a shaft of light, the extravagantly-costumed Catherine Schmidt sat cross-legged at the head of the table. Suddenly, her arms reached out; numerous long and sinuous arms that snaked toward him, with grasping hands that clutched at his limbs and carried him to the table.

He struggled to break free, but she held him fast and called to him through his cries of panic. She told him not to be afraid. She would protect him. He should walk through his fears.

But then she licked her lips with a flickering tongue, and giggled insanely as she tore the clothes from his body.

He remembered gazing around the room from his position of helplessness to study the faces of Allum and Carpenter and Chambers and Paslov. They showed no emotion as they silently watched his public defilement and nodded a collective approval. Then he looked back, to where the featureless Carlisle continued screaming those same forgotten words.

Then had come the nightmare’s moment of greatest horror, when her cries of arousal had penetrated the stillness of death’s approach, and the beautiful features had dissolved into a mask of lust and cruelty. The moment he first saw the silver blade glinting in the light, and heard her chanting the ritual words of slaughter. The moment before that split-second of suspended horror, when he watched it suddenly descend, when he perceived the agony, and listened to his own voice scream.

It was as he watched the lifeblood pumping from him that Hammond woke. Released from the terror, he calmed his breathing, looked across to the luminous hands on the clock, and then smiled grimly into the blackness as he realised the extent of his own foolish imaginings.

He climbed out of bed and went to the bathroom to sluice his face and rinse away the sweat, then poured a glass of water and returned to the bedroom. He began pacing and recalling a combination of people and events, marrying the chastening experiences of the day to the fearful images of the night. He downed the water and began again, sifting through the memory of his own subconscious terror.

Still nothing of the words that Carlisle had screamed came to mind, and so he abandoned the nightmare and thought back to previous conversations.

He recalled Carlisle’s regret at that brief and unfulfilling affair with Emma and his declared sadness at the failings of his own marriage. He recalled the meeting with Paslov in Frankfurt and the compromising photograph that Paslov had used for blackmail.

Hammond’s mind drifted further back to revive earlier conversations. He recalled Carlisle’s comments on the danger of handing Paslov to the FBI, and of how much the Russian spymaster knew about all those secrets that were being so carefully hidden from Hoover’s people.

He went on to recall why Carlisle hadn’t wanted to take up Paslov’s offer to defect, and why he intended handing Paslov to Zalesie at the first sign of obstinacy. He also remembered why Carlisle had been willing to take such a foolish and uncalculated risk.

That was when Hammond suddenly remembered what it was that Carlisle had been screaming.

“Manhattan! It’s all about Manhattan.”

They were the words Carlisle had screamed, he was certain, but what about Manhattan?

With the panic calmed and his mind racing, Hammond more rationally assessed the nightmare. Was the warning significant, or was his subconscious merely feeding his fear and playing tricks with his imagination? Was it all just subconscious nonsense and far-fetched imaginings? Or was it simply another helping of the same guilt-ridden terror that had haunted his sleep for so many years, his nightly penance for so many deadly sins committed?

Was it all that conveniently simple, or had the subconscious been guiding the conscious? Was it steering him to answers that needed questions, and questions he had yet to consider? More worryingly, had it been a warning of approaching doom?

He dressed quickly, headed downstairs, and found the elderly night porter snoozing in an armchair by the remains of the fire. Hammond woke him and asked for a large scotch and water. After much muttering and grumbling and chinking of glass, his drink finally arrived.

“There you go, young sir. Couldn’t sleep, huh?”

“No, too much on my mind, I guess. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

The old man collected the poker from alongside the grate and began prodding and stirring the embers back to life. Hammond slumped into an armchair and sipped at his scotch.

“Long night for you, I suppose.”

The old man stopped prodding and proudly announced,

“I’m used to it, or I should be. Been doing it for nearly forty years now.”

“Forty years, huh? Now that’s a life’s work.”

The old man scoffed at the foolishness of an absent management.

“They tried to get me to retire, said I was too old for it. I said to ’em, you start getting complaints and I’ll start walking. That was three years ago and I’m still here.”

“Doesn’t it ever get lonely?”

“Naw, I’ve always been happy with my own company, and there’s always something to do around here.”

The old man returned the poker and began tidying the furniture in an intentional show of industry. Hammond sipped at his scotch and persevered with the pleasantries.

“Yeah, I suppose so. Bet you’ve seen some sights during that time, huh?”